Live the life you see for yourself

Hey everyone….like promised, I said I would let you know when I started my weight loss journey…so here I am in spandex and all LMAO. I am at my all time max and now it is time to make a change!

Like I shared last time, the beginning of the year I was focused on lowering my stress (yes I still get stressed, but it is more managed) and now I want to focus on losing weight and being healthy to continue decreasing my stress. A lot of stress can be avoided when we have the proper outlets (exercise), unlike what I have been using (McDonald’s, Dominoes, and Mac’s). I know it is unhealthy but we are set up to fail (watch Hungry for Change if you want to be inspires:) even though we do our best. It is really trying to understand why we do it and to realize that we are being tricked by these big companies who have hundreds of scientist to help them create a product that will be addictive! So I am going to share my journey with you, my highs and lows and all the in between:) Want to join me on my journey? It is time to fight back!!!

First of all I want to share that it is only recently that I admitted to myself that I am an emotional eater. I always said that I just loved food, but my love for food has become harmful to me….so it is time to make a change.

Here is a list of how I am feeling now and the things I struggle with…..I want to be able to compare at a later date:)

I am not on any medication

I do take natural sleep aids

I take magnesium to help reduce my stress

I walk up a flight of stairs and I am winded

I frequently wake up with numb arms

I cannot sleep on my back without choking myself awake

I have pain in my left knee

In my left foot I have chronic pain (which I am seeing a foot specialist for)

I have a hard time falling asleep

I can’t walk for very long till my back is in pain

I get headaches a few times a week

I feel hungry all the time but never satisfied unless I over stuff myself

I battle with feeling sad

every little thing seems like a chore (like turning on a sprinkler) LOL

I have mood swings

I feel exhausted

I even nap during the day which I have never done before

Well, I think that’s it LOL. So today is a new day!!! I will be journaling (I am aiming for daily), and I will keep you posted weekly on my progress:) If you want a more play by play, you can follow me on instagram @ abandoned_stress, I would love the company:)

I made it through day one of my juice cleanse, it wasn’t a perfect day but it was a hell of a lot better than it has been in a long time:) Thanks for joining me on this ride of life:)

At the beginning of the year, I decided it was going to be a year of getting myself back/finding myself/and focusing on my mind, body, and soul. The first part of this year was digging deep inside myself and finding purpose again, and healing and focusing on me getting better. I was having a nervous breakdown (this was my second one), and I knew I needed to do something before the dark hole engulfed me.

So I started to fight my way out. Stress is real, something we all face, but I have learned that it is how we respond to it. We can let it eat us up, or we can fight back. After seeing a psychologist for a number of months, a massage therapist and a naturopath, I started to win myself back. My goal was to focus on relaxing for the first 6 months (because I was wound up pretty tight) lol, and I accomplished that….Now I want you to join me on my next 6 months.

Being stressed includes a lot of things…but really the basics are sleep, meditation to keep calm, and diet. So I want to invite you on the second part of my journey…..diet!!!! I know it is a dirty four letter word LOL. Recently I went to my Dr. and got an endoscopy and colonoscopy done….not the highlight of my day but I did feel lighter! (the best I had felt in a while) hahaha. I was diagnosed with IBS which most people probably have now a days because of all the stress. It can be very uncomfortable, a lot of pain, and hard to eat even certain healthy foods.

Starting July 2nd I will be starting a FODMAPS diet which will hopefully help immensely!!! I know that the foods we eat are related to stress, bad foods in=stressed out! So with my naturopath by my side I am starting this adventure to health and I would love for you to be part of it:) I was going to avoid blogging about it because anyone who has followed a diet knows that we don’t always have good days, but I want to be as transparent as possible. Sometimes eating healthy food sucks…but I want a better stress less life:) Will you join me on my journey?

It has been just over a week that we moved into our new home, and I have hit a wall! There is no such thing as no stress but instead it is our responses to stress. Well let’s just say that this past week has been a bit trying LOL.

I am a person that stresses out pretty easy and over the last year I have learned a lot through counselling and of course reading and most of all trial and error. Dealing with stress is never straight forward and the same things don’t always work even for the same situations. How we respond one time can be completely different to the next. So it is a little game of “what will work this time for me in this situation”.

Me and my wife spent a year and a half saving and preparing for our home. Yes it was stressful at times but we had a goal. And now that we have accomplished that goal and are settled in our home, I have hit the wall. Have you ever expirenced after Christmas or after gettting married, or just a big event, that you hit a wall? It is like this immense sadness, all the hype is over, what will you spend your time on now feeling. I am an adrenaline junkie so it takes effort for me to stay in the moment. I’m like “great we bought a house, now that’s done…what next LOL. But it is understanding that things take time:)

Sometimes we just need to be gentle with ourselves….what does that mean? Understand that sometimes we need time to adjust to situations. Listening to our body and getting the rest that we need! It is amazing how our bodies start to betray us with lack of sleep. More sleep creates a healthier mind:)

So what do you need to do to get through stressful times??? Sleep is number one…and be gentle with yourself. Listen to your body…don’t listen to others. Your body has a built in Manuel and it will tell you what it needs….just listen to it:)

Having a hard time sleeping at night. A little cat nap will help you get through the day:). And just remember….be gentle with yourself:). Keep calm and sleep on LOL

Well, it is official:) Me and my wife bought this house 1.5 years ago. It has been a long wait, and we have had our ups and downs. But today walking through our home, it made the last 1.5 years of hard work worth it:)

Some people have teased us because we identify ourselves as minimalists, but minimalism for me, as you know, is about living the life you want to the fullest. Since we bought the house a year and a half ago, we spent 6 months on a no spend and have put everything we could toward this place that we can call our own:) Yes you can be a minimalist and own a home:) So that was a side note…today I want to talk about some of the stresses that come with buying a home and how can you stay level headed.

When we bought our home we were very excited. We had been looking for a whole year and we finally decided to buy a home with Glenview Homes, we were so thrilled!!! It was only about 6 months after that we started to feel a little choked, and thought “OMG what did we do!”. We had bought the house because we wanted a place to call home and we were just sick of living in apartments. At this point we were so stressed, thinking we made the biggest mistake ever and looked into ditching the house….this was not possible unless you were prepared to sell your soul to the Devil LOL. So we decided to accept this purchase and move on:)

We both had moments where we loved the house and moments we thought we would be better off living in our RV (not possible as we own 3 dogs). We didn’t know that these feelings were completely normal!!! As we snuck into our house every week and started to see the progress, we had a change of heart:) Today as we walked into our new home…..we loved it!:) We are not attatched to physical things, we would not let our home hold us back if we desired to do something different…but for right now, we love it:)

For about two weeks before we closed on the house, I was beside myself with stress, so I decided to “reset”. What I mean by reset, is go back to your tool box, and use the things that have worked when you were most stressed. For me it meant more baths with epsom salts, meditation, listen to affirmations, listening to calm music (listening to really fast music will often increase your stress if you are already stressed), and of course taking really deep breaths LOL.

Often as we are feeling less stressed, we stop doing the things that have helped us to get to a place of feeling relaxed. So it is important that when the waters start to rise again…reset:)

Some tips to stay calm when you are buying a home: Focus on the positive (things could always be worse), stay calm (if the topic is getting heated, put it on the back burner), Remember why you are buying (it helped us to remind each other when the other was stressed), keep things in perspective (do colors really matter more than the person you are buying the house with?), And…..do your best to enjoy the process:). Closing dates come fast….faster than you think:) We enjoyed our journey (ups and downs), I hope you will enjoy your journey too:)

LOL sometimes we might be surrounded by a little stress and a little crazy!!! But how much of it is controllable? Do you think it is controllable? I am going to say that half of it is controllable:) The half that is controllable is YOU! I know as painful as that sounds, it is true….We can’t change how people act or what they do, but we can change ourselves and decide how much we will be a part of something….I will share something that happened to me and my wife last week.

It was early last week and I was driving, my wife was in the car as she was going to keep the car after she dropped me off at work. I came to a stop where you need to merge, suddenly we were hit from behind! For a split second the two of us had no idea what just happened! We got out of the car and a young girl driving a big bad Ford LOL got out and was very apologetic. We all were obviously in shock a bit, trying to scramble and exchange information. As I pulled out my license, she realized that she did not have her own, nor was she covered by her insurance because she told us this. She seemed so genuine and said that she would pay for the damage. I got her number and email and we went off our separate ways.

The next couple of days was a challenge to get a hold of her, but finally we were able to touch base and again she reassured me that she would pay for the damage. I got a quote from our dealership (Toyota Rocks:) and said that it would cost 1200$ for the damage.

When I sent the quote to the girl she started to come up with every excuse in the book about how she is in school part time and is a real estate agent part time etc etc… So of course I did what any normal person would do and I freaked out LOL. I called my wife and we talked about it, and then I took a few deep breaths. Did the situation suck? Yep! But was it worth me getting that stressed? I couldn’t change a thing! We had no accident rapport and I could feel my pressure rise and got an instant headache just because of the hype. Not worth it!!!!

We have a choice when it comes to stress, we can either hold onto it, or we can let it go. All stress is, is a tug of war between us and the situation. If you keep pulling on the rope, stress pulls back harder…..but there is another option. You can let go of the rope. Have you ever played tug of war and your team just decided to let go? Guess what happens to the other team? They end up on their ass LOL. Make stress land on its ass this week, you will feel better for it. You will have the peace of mind. If the other person is in the wrong, that is their stuff, not yours. Do what is right and what is good for you:)